Chapter 46
Many books are taken from the shelves. None are ever entirely returned to them.
Overdue , author unknown
CHAPTER 46
The rain fell for forty days and for forty nights and it seemed as if the world must drown in such a deluge. But the Dust’s thirst had grown and grown and grown again, across ages of men and canith. The cracks on the hardpan ran deeper than history and each needed to be slaked.
The last of the taproots, most ancient of their kind, opened new leaves. The wind-weed stopped its endless turning and sank its fingers into the ground. And on the thirtieth day the Dust declared itself finally full.
Streams ran where no stream ever had. One joined hands with the next until rivers were made, tumbling raw and white-mouthed into the great lakebed. Slowly, slowly, the waters rose, and on the thirty-ninth day the ancient basin lay full and brimming.
“It’s beautiful.” Evar gazed out over the greening plains. His rain-dark mane hung soaking around his shoulders. The sky ran in rivulets across the hard muscle of his chest and belly.
“It is.” Livira held his hand. Soon there would be grass, and the herds would come, bowing their heads to eat, renewing a cycle that had been so close to broken that none could tell the difference.
She leaned against him, not needing his strength or his support but enjoying it even so. The rain fell warm and its soft invasion had reached every part of her. Thin robes clung like a second skin; her hair ran in black streams to frame her face. Water dripped from her nose, from her fingers, ran down her legs.
“It’s not too late. It can be saved.” Evar rumbled and the sound vibrated through the side of Livira’s head pressed against his ribs.
“It’s not too late?” Livira raised her face to watch him, water filling her eyes.
“Close to dead is not dead.” He looked down at her, veiled by the wet darkness of his mane.
“Come down here.” She reached up to draw him into a kiss.
Evar resisted with a grin. “You come up here.” And he lifted her.
Livira wrapped her arms about his neck and her legs around his waist, resting her weight on his hips. His tongue had a taste to it, but she liked it: the boys she’d kissed before had tasted of nothing. It was rougher than a man’s tongue and reached further, but its exploration was gentle.
She pulled back from the kiss, slightly breathless. “How far do you think you could carry me like this?”
“How far would you like to go, librarian?” A wolfish smile.
“All the way.” She kissed his nose. “To somewhere dry. With something soft to lie on.”
Evar squeezed her to him. “I remember this story. It was always one of my favourites. Watching everything change.” His voice fell to a whisper. “How am I here again? Is it because I’m dying?”
“Don’t say that.” Fear made her fierce. “This is my story. There’s no dying in it. It’s about coming to life.”
“How are we here then?” Evar lowered her reluctantly to her feet. Letting her slide slowly down the length of him. “And why”—he looked at the northern horizon where brightness showed, the first after more than a month of rain clouds coming in a grey tide—“why do I feel watched?”
A coldness infected the wind, and the rain grew chill. Shadows, which had been washed away by the endless downpour, returned, reaching to the south.
Livira stepped back, looking at the sky. Her brow furrowed; anger showed. “This is my book!”
—
“Remarkable!”
“Lord Algar?” Algar’s bodyguard, Jons, turned from his study of the aisle stretching before him to where Algar sat with his back to the shelves.
Algar rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze away the spiking headache that had made him look up from the page. The vision in his single eye had grown blurry.
This is my book . It had almost been as if it were written in the knowledge that he would read it. The pain and the blur had struck as he read those words.
It had been one of the soldiers who had pointed to the hairline crack that had followed them across the chamber with the shelf-towers and back into the room they’d been trapped in for so long by the skeer. Even her sharp eyes would not have noticed it but for the escape of a faint black mist.
Nobody had an explanation for the crack following them wherever they went. This omen, combined with the heavy losses caused by what seemed to have been a single pair of canith, meant morale had been low on their return. The damned things had nearly got him too. The swing of a white sword had left a shallow cut running between his collarbones. Had the blow been a fraction higher and deeper it would have made an end of him. Though minor, the wound still burned and wept blood, and the centre circle wasn’t safe to return to.
Algar felt the weight of their situation bearing down on him. Black demons had driven them from the circle where they’d survived these past weeks. The chamber into which Yute’s rebels had fled held threats as bad or worse than the skeer that seemed to have been driven from it.
Algar had sought distraction in the second of the books they’d taken from the duster girl. The so-called librarian that Yute kept as a pet. She had blinded them with the first book. This second one showed no immediate magics to match the darkness springing from the first, but she must have kept it for a reason. He had wondered if its magics were written into it more deeply. They must be.
The rest of the king’s war party was spread around the aisles, gathering themselves after the canith attacks, giving closer attention to hastily bound wounds, taking stock. The prisoners had been secured near the centre of the group. Algar closed the book and stood up. One of the captives appeared to be wearing librarians’ robes. Old, weathered, and torn, but still just about recognisable.
Once he was on his feet, he saw with a stifled gasp that almost invisible cracks radiated out in all directions from where he’d been sitting. Additional fractures even ringed the spot with several concentric circles as if a great hammer had struck exactly where he’d sat. Algar backed away in shock and faintly—so faintly—the library’s silence cracked around him, a single hairline fracture tracing its way across the floor, arrowing towards his feet.
With a frown he moved the book left then right. The crack meandered after it, first one way, then the other.
The book! The book was the source. Algar considered handing it to Jons in case the thing might be harmful. But no, the girl had carried it with her. He barked a short laugh of surprise. Nothing in all the years of research under the king and his forefathers had ever made so much as a scratch on the stuff of the library. Nothing in the histories reported any different result from societies that had conquered the skies and built weapons that levelled not only cities but continents. Yet here in his hand, a simple, crudely put together book of aimless love stories was carving through it before his eyes.
Algar set off in search of the prisoners. Soon, muffled sounds of pain led him to them. The soldiers had a ritual they called “tenderising the meat.” A grand name for a beating meant to take the fight out of new captives, but it served a double purpose, hinting at the fate awaiting them.
Three troopers had a tall, skinny young man on his feet, hands tied behind his back. They took turns in landing blows on him, waiting for him to turn towards the source before striking from a different angle. A gag reduced his cries to grunts and gasps.
“Leave that man alone.” Algar strode towards them, relying on the resting soldiers who cluttered the aisle to move their legs before he reached them.
“My lord.” The trio around the man stepped back.
“Take his gag off.” Algar studied the prisoner, who stood hunched around his pain. Skinny, sunburned, dirty but not with the same grime that stained the king’s men. His robe looked to have been worn thin by hard use, torn in many places. “This is no way to treat a librarian.”
The shortest of the three tormentors, a swarthy man with a thick black beard, yanked the gag away.
“What’s your name, young man?”
“A-Arpix.” Blood ran from the corner of his mouth and one eye was already swelling closed.
“Well, Arpix.” Algar smiled the smile he had used for his children when they were small. “I want you to tell me all about this book.”